April 1

April FOOLS.

It's a joke that I'm posting this early, but I have to get some of these down before I forget. Thus far today there have been some great April Fools pranks that I've either heard or read about. The first involves the Michigan State basketball team. Apparently some local radio station earlier this morning announced that a few unnamed players from MSU were going to be suspended for the weekend (Final Four) for their involvement in an illegal gambling ring and other tomfoolery. That resulted in said station's phone lines blowing up with angry callers; None of whom gave a thought to the day they were calling on.

Next is a video that leaked involving Nintendo's Wii and the game Super Smash Bros. Brawl. A third party publisher known as "Wii Expand" demoed their new downloadable content for the game which gives it Mortal Kombat-style violence and gore. Blood gushing from uppercuts and kicks, Mario being decapitated, etc. The video game industry loves April 1 for reasons such as these. So many things to make up. Good looking fake video, though. For you 360 enthusiasts, try this one on for size.

This one may be my favorite. Early - and I mean early - this morning, news broke that BitTorrent giant PirateBay had finally settled it's drawn out lawsuit with Warner Bros...in the form of the U.S. media conglomerate buying the website for $13 BILLION (10 Billion Euros). Hahaha. Awesome. Reports indicated that after Warners got the notion that the to-be-rendered verdict was going to fall against them, they decided on buying their long time opponent. For $13 Billion. Hahaha. Awesome. Dig the header image on PirateBay's website.

Hahaha. Awesome.

Here's some more fake fun from today:

• Mark Cuban announced via his Twitter account that he has just purchased a majority share of the Los Angeles Lakers from Jerry Buss.  He said that if L.A. were not to win the title this year, he'd make lopsided trades to bring over Dirk Nowitzki and others to the Lakers to guarantee a championship next season.  (Credit: Forum Blue and Gold)
• A pair of Christopher Nolan/Batman tidbits: The first came from JoBlo.com where it was announced the new film would be tentatively titled Battle For Gotham, have an "R" rating, co-star Johnny Depp as The Riddler, and - with the help of James Cameron - feature a "computer-generated version of Heath Ledger as The Joker using ultra-realistic texture-mapping and advanced personality algorithms designed by Cameron's company."  Wow.  Another website (NolanFans.com) released a statement that gave the new Batman film the title Badman Redemption with a summer of 2011 release date.
• 2011 pops up again in this post from About.com.  I'm excited to say that Apple Computers are getting into the automotive industry with their just announced iCar.  It will be available in three models: The iCar Nano, iCar Pro, and iCar Air, with a lower cost version known as the iCar Shuffle to be released the next year.  Just read the article.  Hilarious.
• Yahoo announced it's new "Ideological Search" that allows users, for the first time, to search the interwebs for information that filters out only Democratic or Republican results.  Just click on the donkey or elephant icon, type in a few keywords, and bada-boom, you're subject to information more biased than any programming on Fox News or MSNBC.  Awesome.  Speaking of Fox News...Glen Beck.  No, that's all.  That's the joke.

I love that this actually turned into a decent size post.  Besides coming across some amazing fake news - that didn't involve Fox News for once (Sad Trombone) - I was busy working in AE on a few things.  That's about it for today.

So I grab my bags and go,
B